They are so interesting to watch. Some days the downtown Olympia crows pass directly over where I live. You can see sub groups within the flock flying together as crows have strong societies of friends and family. They are prone to leave earlier when the weather is cold and wet so timing is variable. Our flocks split up among several roosts so there is no one huge roosting area. The largest will be about 2000 by the time other groups join the flight. Would love to see such a huge river as you have. Thanks. Olympia, WA
Life is for the birds.
From: Scott Ramos <
lsr at ramoslink.info>
To: Dennis Paulson <
dennispaulson at comcast.net>
Cc: Tweeters Newsgroup <
tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2018 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Bothell crow roost
Dennis,
I work in a complex just east of the UW Bothell/Cascadia CC campus. I can't speak to the crow exodus during the summer and early fall because my return home (to Seattle) is much earlier than their roosting times. However, once dusk approaches the evening commute time, the flocks of crows staging and roosting become truly impressive. The congregations tend to move around a bit from year to year, however.
Last winter, the entire area east of I-405-;due east of the campus, from NE 195th all the way south to Hwy 522-;would 'fill' with crows just before dusk as they used the lawns, buildings and trees to stage before retreating toward their roosts in the campus wetlands. Without exaggeration, you could see 1000s of crows during this period of the evening. Imagine creating a tapestry of crows with free space of about 2-3 crow-widths as packing density and you get the idea of just how many birds you could see.
On the days when my commute home-;heading west and south on 522-;was a little earlier, if you could take your eyes off the traffic, you could see one continuous river of crows as it moved north and east toward Bothell. The flocks are so thick then that they color the sky for miles. Of course, crows don't fly in any coordinated fashion, but move in the general direction of the flock, with lots of swooping up and down and back and forth.
When I have taken the time to go over to the campus, what I found productive was to drive on to the roof level of the North Parking Garage which gives a great vantage point of the wetlands area. The first time I did this, several years ago, my initial focus was on the crows coming from the region to the south and west. But, when I turned my gaze, there was another river of crows coming from the north and east. Doing a quick survey of numbers in neighboring grids of a few degrees at a time, it seemed that there could have been 10,000 crows coming from each of the two main sources. And that is probably a low-ball estimate.
Definitely worth the effort to experience this event. I'll post an update when the numbers and timing are noteworthy.
Scott Ramos
Seattle
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On Sep 30, 2018, at 8:09 AM, Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net> wrote:
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Hello tweets,
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I've thought about visiting the crow roost at Cascadia Community College in Bothell for some years but have never got around to it. Does anyone out there know what the seasonal parameters are of the roost? Are they going there in large numbers now, or does it get better later in the winter?
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Thanks.
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Dennis Paulson
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Seattle
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